


Guilt is a Useless Emotion

by rabidchild67



Category: White Collar
Genre: Bedside Vigils, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 11:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/pseuds/rabidchild67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter sits with Neal in the hospital. That’s where the story starts and the pain begins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt is a Useless Emotion

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a song by New Order.

Josephine Esposito wanted to be a barber when she was a little girl. She’d made this decision by the ripe old age of five, sitting on the floor of her grandfather Lorenzo’s barber shop, playing with her Barbies after school every day. Later, Lorenzo would discourage her, saying to her in Italian that she was a smart girl and should devote her life to something more important. By the time she was ten, she believed him, and by the time she was in high school, she knew she wanted to be a nurse.

Now she is 27 and shaving men she doesn’t know anyway, not even thinking about the irony, because what she does is still important. 

Josephine Esposito takes good care of her patients in the critical care unit, bathing and grooming them carefully so that when their loved ones see them, they’re looking as they always did, and can maybe derive a little bit of comfort from the small slice of normalcy she offers them. 

There is a low, wry _humph_ behind her as she shaves her latest patient, and she cocks her head, not stopping her work, but letting the person know she heard him. 

“You know, he never shaves that closely – always prefers the after-five o’clock shadow.” 

“You shouldn’t be here yet, Mr. Burke,” she says, not for the first time, “visiting hours don’t start for another forty minutes.” She doesn’t put too much of a scold in her voice though, because Peter Burke is a very nice man, so she gives him the benefit of the doubt when she can. Her supervisor would probably ream her a new one, but Josephine doesn’t care. Peter Burke is an FBI agent, which means he keeps the country safe, and his partner is lying in a coma in the bed in front of her as she shaves his face.

“He’d enjoy this, though,” Burke goes on, “having a pretty girl dote on him like this.”

“I’m just doing my job,” Josephine says, coloring. Mr. Caffrey is, indeed, very handsome

“Doesn’t mean it’s not appreciated. Though, like I said, he prefers the stubble.” Mr. Burke caresses Mr. Caffrey’s smooth cheek softly with the backs of his fingers. “I like this though.”

“It helps if the tape for the ‘vent can stick to bare skin,” Josephine points out, and then wishes she could kick herself as he breathes a soft, “Oh,” before removing his hand. “How practical,” he adds.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be – you’re doing your job.” He sits and waits for her to finish, hands clasped loosely between his knees. 

When she leaves, he’s caressing Mr. Caffrey’s face again and murmuring softly to him; she can’t hear, but she has before, and his words are always the same anyway: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

\----

_“Boss, are we going to see you at the office at all this week?”_

Josephine doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the young woman and Mr. Burke have sat themselves at the table next to hers in the hospital cafeteria, and the drop ceiling makes voices carry exceptionally well.

_“Probably not, Diana.”_

They sit in silence for many minutes, Mr. Burke staring into his lunch and the woman named Diana looking at him. Finally she speaks, _“It’s not your fault – no one thinks that, least of all Neal.”_

_“I knew Neal's past with Sergei, I might have guessed what would happen.”_

Josephine bows her head and tries to eat her spinach quesadilla, but the cheese has congealed and it’s a little tough to get a plastic fork through.

_“And so did he, Peter.”_

_“He wouldn’t have done it on his own – he did it for me.”_

_“Sergei would’ve killed you outright.”_

_“And he almost killed Neal. Neal went in to protect me and now he’s gonna –“_

_“Don’t say it, Peter.“_

_“Why not, when I can’t help but think it, feel it,_ live it _every second of every day?”_

The woman stands and looks to be on the verge of either leaving or hitting something. 

_“I never thought I’d see the day.”_

_“The day of what?”_

_“The day you’d chicken out of anything.”_

Josephine flinches – that was pretty harsh, but she didn’t know the particulars of what had happened.

When Mr. Burke doesn’t answer, Diana continues, _“It takes a lot of courage to hope sometimes, Peter. Think you can cowboy up?”_

The woman named Diana stalks away, leaving Mr. Burke alone with his chicken noodle soup.

\----

“Mr. Burke? I thought that was you. I didn’t see you upstairs today.” Josephine was walking out of the hospital at the end of her shift, but she’d spotted Peter Burke sitting on a bench in the atrium on the main floor of the hospital. If she didn’t hurry, she’d miss her train.

He looks up at Josephine as if she’s caught him doing something. “Hello, Nurse Esposito,” he says quietly. “I was just sitting here, thinking.”

“Oh? Cuz from over there, it looked like brooding.”

“Have you met my wife?” he asks her.

“Just the one time.” 

“You remind me of her,” he says.

Josephine smiles, pleased. Mrs. Burke is a beautiful woman, though she hasn’t been back since Mr. Caffrey’s craniotomy. “I hope in the good way,” Josephine says, and he nods. “What’s wrong, Mr. Burke?”

He just shakes his head, but she understands – the doubt, the fear. “It’ll take time, you know, but when he’s ready, he’ll wake up.”

“It’s been two weeks,” he says. “Two weeks of…” he makes an expansive gesture, but words seem to be failing him, and he settles on, “…this nothing. And no change.” 

“And it might take two more. Don’t give up yet.” He looks up sharply at her, brown eyes getting darker. There is guilt there, and shame, but she’s seen this before. “Of course you haven’t,” she reassures him. 

“I don’t know,” he says quietly and then stares at his hands, picking at the cuticles that have been bitten raw over the last two weeks. He says nothing more, so she leaves, and gets to the station in time to see her train pull away.

\----

“Morning, Inez,” Josephine calls to her co-worker as she settles in at the nurse’s station, fresh from an actual, entire weekend off that she’d spent with her boyfriend David up in Vermont. She wasn’t much for skiing, but he was, so she gamely went along, hanging with his best friends’ girlfriends and drinking way too many spiked hot chocolates for her own good. She checks over her patient list and feels a momentary pang – there is a different name assigned to bed 6 than when she’d left on Friday.

“Something wrong, Jo?” Inez asks, and Josephine realizes she must’ve made a sound.

“Nothing, it’s just that – Mr. Caffrey?” 

“He’s down on six,” Inez answers and Josephine feels a wave of relief wash over her to hear her patient has been transferred to Neuro. “He woke up on Saturday night.”

“Oh? Oh, that’s lovely,” Josephine says, eyes welling with happy tears for no reason whatsoever.

Later, another of Josephine’s patients is transferred for an emergency surgery, and her route back takes her to the sixth floor. She finds a familiar figure standing in the hallway.

“Nurse Esposito,” Mr. Burke says, greeting her first. He is smiling, but his eyes still hold the sadness she would have thought would be gone by now. 

“Hello,” she says, and shakes his proffered hand. “I just had to come and see for myself. I’m so happy to see Mr. Caffrey is out of the woods.” She glances into the private room; Mr. Caffrey, head still swathed in bandages, is in there, looking pale but otherwise alert. He is talking to a strange, bespectacled, bald man Josephine has not seen before – or rather, the bald man is doing the talking and Mr. Caffrey the listening. His blue eyes look much better with life behind them.

“Thank you for that. And for stopping by – it means a lot.” His words come out slowly, like he’s trying to control his emotions.

“But why are you out here? Shouldn’t you be in there with him? He’s well – finally. Isn’t it what you’ve prayed for?”

“Of course, but –“

“But what?” When he doesn’t answer, she does what she never, ever is supposed to do – she tells a patient’s loved one what she really thinks. “I know you probably haven’t given me much thought, Mr. Burke. I mean, I’m just the nurse, I don’t know you or your life. But I do know what it’s like to think someone you love is dying and that you’re looking at them for the last time – I see it all the time. And you know what’s really brave? Being there anyway.”

“I haven’t felt very brave lately.” There’s a lot he isn’t saying to her because he thinks she doesn’t know anything, but she’s on a roll and she likes him and she hates watching him suffer.

“Bravery is relative. Look, I know there are things going on here I don’t understand. I get it, it’s not all that cut and dried all the time. But look at him,” she points her chin at Mr. Caffrey sitting in the bed, who is looking at him with such open adoration she almost feels like she’s intruding on something that ought to be private. Mr. Burke turns and his eyes widen. “He loves you – a blind person could see it. That’s got to fix something, somehow, don’t you think?”

He says nothing more to her, just hugs her and returns to Mr. Caffrey’s side. She sticks around another minute, until the protests of the bald man over their kiss have died down, and Mr. Burke has taken a seat next to Mr. Caffrey in the bed, his fingertips running over the stubble that has regrown on Mr. Caffrey’s chin and smiling. 

\----

Thank you for your time.


End file.
